ITHACA, N.Y. -- Cornell Executive Vice President Stephen Golding has identified several goals for the university, among them integrating all of the campus's various planning processes and financial planning.

Other goals include establishing a culture "sustainable" within Cornell's administrative infrastructure and committing to the implementation of a campuswide safety, health and environmental strategy.

Golding presented these goals, among others, at the Executive Vice President Leadership Forum, Oct. 25, in the Appel Commons. Speaking to an audience of approximately 250, including vice presidents, directors and members of Golding's senior leadership, he summarized what he thinks he has heard in his first six months on the job. He identified opportunities that are worthy of the expenditure of additional time and energy and commented on how he thinks administrative services can better be delivered across campus.

One purpose of the forum was to start a broader conversation about Golding's vision for the evolution of Cornell's administrative services in coming years.

Golding said that after meeting with various departments and units, several common themes have emerged. "What I hear are people saying that Cornell is too decentralized to be managed effectively. … [and that] Cornell's decentralized structure promotes territorialism and self-sufficiency at the expense of teamwork and collaboration."

He said that many people believe a general "lack of consultation with operating units manifests itself in poor communication and information sharing, leading to suboptimization in decision-making." That has led people to report that they should not be held accountable for decisions they make when they are not provided with adequate information about strategic directions, he said. People are also frustrated, he noted, because they think the Cornell environment is too often reactive rather than proactive when it comes to institutional initiatives.

Cornell is so diverse and unique that many people believe that "a single administrative approach is unachievable at Cornell," Golding said.

Beliefs such as these, he noted, can negatively affect the administration's ability to "execute -- to do their job to the best of their ability" -- and can compromise the administration's collective goal of "making Cornell one of the best-managed institutions of higher education nationally and throughout the world."

Golding called on Cornell's administrative core to work collaboratively to strategize how to best use available resources, develop appropriate incentive and reward structures to foster "stewardship" of the university's assets, to work on developing a culture where success is measured by what is achieved together and not what is accomplished individually, and to train the next generation of administrative leadership to be more aggressive in pursuing these goals.

"Cornell has the opportunity to be a beacon for all of higher education administration because of our unique structure and leadership position. But to accomplish this, we may have to run … a little faster," he said.